WOW

Once I started reading this book I couldn't put it down. The story is very compelling in itself, but Julie Gregory is also an excellent and occasionally hilarious writer. It did remind me of Augusten Burrough's work in the way she described the people around her with a child's blunt, uncompromising perspective. It breaks your heart that a child this perceptive and aware would have to endure what she did. Her mother has to be one of the scariest parents alive, but Julie opens the book with some hair-raising scenes from her mother's own adolescence so you can see that her cruelly bizarre behavior didn't just spring from a vacuum. Overall this is a fascinating and beautifully poetic read about twisted family dynamics and how the author carved out her own path to sanity.

Touching

Perhaps the best memoir I've read since Rikki Lee Travolta's heart aching "My Fractured Life" which I personally consider one of the best books of the past 5 years. This is that good. If you liked "My Fractured Life," you will like this one. It will hurt you to read some of it but you'll come out a better person.

Compelling memoir

I give it five stars, although I'm not finished with it yet. Gregory's prose is so deep, I liken it to the raw emotion felt in 'Girl Interrupted'. This is a horrible case of child abuse, and it is a miracle how the author survived. This is a biography as powerful as 'Sybil' but even more horrifying.